Little Black Lies

by Sandra Block

  “What? Can’t do what?”

  She keeps pacing, not answering. “I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this.”

  “Sofia.” I stand up from my chair, startled by her sudden change in behavior. “Tell me what’s going on here.”

  She keeps mumbling, pacing. For the first time since she was admitted, she looks as if she actually belongs in a mental institution. I thumb through her chart to look at her medication list and am surprised to see none. I don’t think I have one patient on my list without medications. I write down an order for Ativan, two milligrams, and sign it.

  Sofia stops pacing, standing stock-still in the middle of the room. “He was gone. He was doing okay. I wasn’t hurting him,” she says as if she is begging. “Why would he come back? My sister never bothered to. Why did he have to?”

  “I don’t know, Sofia. I think Dr. Grant contacted him about releasing you. Your brother wanted to talk to us. To talk to you. I think that’s understandable.”

  She shakes her head furiously, then sits back down, hands tight on the arms of her chair. “What if I don’t want to see him?” she asks, raising her head. She looks like the queen of the mental hospital.

  “I’m not sure you have a choice on that one, Sofia.”

  “But I was doing so well,” she argues, dropping her regal stance, her voice plangent, almost whiny.

  “Yes, but we also have to consider how he is doing.” I walk over to her, putting my hand on her arm, my fingers interlaced with her tattoo. “It’s going to be all right, Sofia.”

  “Nothing is all right.” She pulls in her arms, away from my touch.

  “Listen.” I step back a foot to give her some space. “You hurt him. You hurt his eye. That’s okay. We’ll work through it. This is something we can work through together.”

  Sofia doesn’t answer. She squeezes her own arms so tightly that she is leaving red fingerprints.

  “Are you afraid he doesn’t want you to be released? Is that it?”

  “It has nothing to do with that.”

  “Then what is it? Tell me, Sofia. Maybe I can help you.”

  “I’m afraid…” She is rocking back and forth.

  “Yes. What are you afraid of? Tell me.”

  She looks up at me, her eyes pure desperation. “I’m afraid he’s going to make me remember.”

  * * *

  Through the window, Tiffany looks thinner than when I saw her last, if that’s possible, with more scars mapped out on her face.

  We are in the psychiatric ER, also known as the PER, also known as the Fishbowl. From the main office inside where the doctors sit, patient intake rooms radiate out like spokes on a wheel. Patients are constantly peering out of their rooms and looking at command central to see what’s going on. Thus the Fishbowl, and we are the fish. It is a well-armed Fishbowl, however, with double-plated glass and reinforced, solid-wood doors, should all hell break loose, which is not a rare occurrence in the PER.

  The guard picks one of ten keys hanging from a long chain on his belt, clinks it through the keyhole, and lets me into room seven. When I sit next to her, I can see her teeth are decaying. Her breath is horrid.

  “Can you tell me what’s going on?” I ask.

  She doesn’t answer. She looks morose, not high, so we must have caught her coming down this time.

  “How are you doing?”

  At this her eyes fill up with tears, tracking lines down her dirty, ruddy, pocked face. “I’m such a fuckup.” Fine hair coats her chin. We see this in anorexics, too. Lanugo from starvation. Her jaw muscles expand and contract as she clenches her teeth.

  “Tiffany,” I say, patting her knee, “maybe this is your chance.”

  She turns to me, the briefest glimmer of hope in her eyes.

  “I mean it. Let’s stabilize you, get you to rehab. Then stay there, Tiffany. Get clean. It gets better than this, I promise.”

  “I’ve tried,” she says, the glimmer dimming. “It never works.”

  “This time it’ll work. Give it another try.” I feel like a cheerleader. But I hardly know what else to offer at this point. To this patient, who might have been a cheerleader herself not so long ago, with her own hopes and dreams, but who instead is dying before my eyes.

  “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I ask her.

  Tiffany lets out a hoarse, bitter laugh, tears staining her face again. It’s hard to tell if she is laughing or crying. Both, I guess. “That’s all over now,” she says, shaking her head.

  “Maybe not,” I insist. She is only twenty-nine, though she looks fifty. “Do you remember? Did you ever have a dream of what you wanted to be?”

  “An airline stewardess,” she says, laughing again. She sounds a million years old. “Ever since I was a kid. I loved their blue uniforms, their lipstick. Everything.”

  “Listen,” I urge her, “that can still be you, Tiffany. With your hair done up, wearing a crisp blue uniform, making announcements, helping out passengers.” It didn’t sound all that exciting from my description, however. “Traveling around the world,” I add, and her eyes light up again.

  “Yeah, maybe,” she says, and I can see the battle on her face: hope versus drugs. It’s rigged, though. Every neurotransmitter in your brain screams for the drugs, and it’s hard to ignore your brain. Your brain fashions excuses, talks you down, and basically betrays your whole body to get its fix. And the more you take crystal meth, the more your brain disintegrates into itself. Her brain is just as pocked with holes as her face at this point.

  “Think about it, Tiffany,” I say, leaving her to her thoughts, which I know, coming off meth, are unfathomably dark and low. I do a quick check and see no shoes, no shoelaces. I write “Suicide precautions” on the order sheet to be certain. All the crystal meth and cocaine patients go directly into suicide precautions because sometimes their brains convince them, one, that they are terrible, worthless people, and two, that it’s not worth living without drugs. Her new, puffy, hospital-issued white socks glow against the grimy floor. They will be stained gray soon, like all the other patients’.

  The door lock clinks again, and a tall body strides in. Mike. The ER resident and former suitor. Suitor via one text and one phone call, both of which I ignored, basically due to his lack of being Jean Luc.

  “Hi,” he says, surprised. I stand up from my chair in greeting. We regard each other not with displeasure. In fact, a smile is sneaking onto my face.

  Tiffany looks up at him, then at the wall again, as if it’s not worth the effort to register this newcomer in scrubs, just another one of “them.”

  “So what’s up, Tiger Lily?” I ask him, wondering why I am quoting Woody Allen. I realize it is something my mom used to say. He shrugs, still smiling, not getting the reference. “So what brings you to this neck of the woods?” I ask, still sounding like my mother.

  “You know, this and that,” he says, jiggling a mammoth chart in his hand.

  “They sent you up from the ER?”

  “Someone needs stitches out. One Mrs. Carl,” he says, glancing at the chart for the name.

  “Oh, this is Tiffany Carlson, not Carl. Carl’s in…I’m not sure. She might have been transferred to a room already. Here, come with me, we can check it out.” I turn to my patient. “Do you mind if I leave for a minute? I’ll be right back.”

  She doesn’t respond.

  We head out to room three, where Mrs. Carl is. But Dr. A is already there, removing stitches, even though she’s Jason’s patient. Long, angry purple lines run up and down her wrists. Vertical, so she meant business. Scars she will have forever. I trace the scars on my own hands.

  “Healed quite well,” Dr. A says proudly, as though he stitched them himself. “Fairly superficial, which is helpful.” He reaches into his ever-ready black bag for another pair of smaller scissors.

  “So,” says Mike, “it appears I’m not needed.”

  “Oh yes,” Dr. A says. “I’ve got this all covered up and around.”


  Mike raises an eyebrow.

  “He just means covered,” I say.

  Dr. A is humming quietly. “This one’s not quite ready to come out,” he says.

  “No?” says Mrs. Carl, who, for someone who just attempted suicide, seems in good spirits. Her hair has been recently permed, her body a bit doughy. She is a neighborhood mom. Someone who would have baked you cookies.

  “Not quite,” repeats Dr. A. “In fact,” he says, scrounging around for yet another instrument, “it could use one more knot.” His hands spin acrobatically as he ties off a few more knots.

  We give him a wave to signal we’re leaving and head back to command central to drop off the chart. The guard unlocks the door for us. “Your boy’s got some skills,” Mike says.

  “Dr. A? Yeah, he used to be a surgeon back in Thailand. Some super-duper neurovascular guy supposedly. Couldn’t get into the program here.”

  “That’s too bad,” Mike says.

  And then we stand there. He has no further reason to stay in the PER and I have no further reason to keep him. Except that I like the look of the patch of chest hair fanning out in the V-neck of his scrubs.

  “About that coffee,” I say.

  “Yeah, about that coffee.”

  “I’m thinking I need a redo on that one.”

  He whips out his phone and starts typing. “I’m texting you my number. Call me.” Mike snaps the patient chart shut and points a finger at me. “Don’t make me beg, Dr. Goldman. Because I will if I have to, and it’s not going to be a pretty sight.”

  And my heart didn’t leap, but it maybe skipped a little.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jack Vallano is a handsome man, despite his eye patch. Or maybe because of his eye patch. “Ain’t got no eye,” he says, pointing at it. “Maybe you noticed.” He might have caught me staring, though it is difficult to look at him without staring.

  “Never could get an eye that fit right. So I went for the pirate look,” he says, smiling now, bright-white teeth, Hollywood teeth, though he is a not a Hollywood guy. His smile reminds me of someone, and I realize with a stomach quiver that it is his sister. Jack is a burly man, not fat, though, every inch bone and muscle. He has on a dark brown leather jacket that again, could look fashionable but isn’t meant to. It looks weathered because it is weathered, ditto the jeans and T-shirt. His face is weathered, too, though he’s only thirty, ruddy with pale freckles laced across his skin.

  We sit in the conference room, Jack, me, and Dr. Grant, discussing the perfectly terrifying prospect of meeting with his sister. The woman who killed his mother and left him scarred and half-blind, or as Jack himself put it, “Yeah, she fucked me up pretty good,” and whom he has not seen since that very night. But he seems less antsy than I am, given that I ran out of Adderall last night. I tense my toes to stop them from tapping.

  We are sitting in our family therapy room, which does not inspire confidence or even a sense of well-being, though it is meant to. Inspirational photos line the wall in cheap, thin metal frames—Achieve, Anything Is Possible, Together We Can Change the World—with the appropriately matched picture of people climbing mountains, or kayaking rapids, or what have you. Old, coffee-stained, dusty mugs sit in the corner on a small wooden table. Toys with layers of bacterial grime, from when Johnny wiped his nose and Susie was still getting over enterovirus, are all thrown into a plastic play oven with a perpetually open door after the fastener succumbed to its last yank. The sides of the room are lined with plastic chairs in various shades of bright blue and orange, like an airport from the seventies. This is a room that could have been decorated by one of our more functional schizophrenic patients.

  Jack Vallano loops his heavy leather jacket over the chair.

  “So,” says Dr. Grant, breaking into the silence. Today he is wearing a tie with diamonds, a checkered shirt, and the same gray pin-striped pants. He reminds me of a child dressed up for Clash Day. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” Jack returns.

  “Let me ask you, if I may, before we start: What are you hoping to achieve in meeting with your sister?”

  Jack has his elbows planted on the table, his chin in his hands. He rubs his face as if to wake himself up, maybe from this nightmare or just the long car ride. His scar turns magenta and twists, then settles back into a jagged peach line.

  “I got your letter,” he says.

  “Yes,” says Dr. Grant.

  “Talking about possibly releasing my sister. ‘She may not warrant further treatment’ and this and that,” he adds, as if he is reading from the letter.

  Dr. Grant nods. “And what do you think about that?”

  Jack pulls out a pack of Marlboros and tilts the pack our way in offering.

  “Um,” says Dr. Grant with a glimmer of panic, “there’s actually no…”

  “Oh, right,” Jack answers, apologetic, stuffing the pack back in his jacket, the packet crinkling. “So what do I think of that?” he repeats. “I think she’s full of shit. That’s why I came up here.”

  I take an instant liking to Jack Vallano.

  “And why do you say that?” asks Dr. Grant.

  Jack leans back in his wooden chair, which squeaks as if straining with his bulk. “Simple. She’s the devil.”

  “Okay,” Dr. Grant answers. “Let’s put a pin in that, if you don’t mind, and change our focus here a little bit. Can you tell me about yourself, if you feel comfortable doing that?”

  “Sure,” he says. “What do you want to know?”

  “How about we start with the incident?”

  “The incident, right. Let’s see. I was eight years old when my family was murdered, and my sister stabbed me in the eye. So that was a pretty good setup.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Went to a string of foster homes. Didn’t go very well. I had ‘trust issues,’ I read on one of my social worker reports. Stands to reason, I figure.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say, working myself into the conversation.

  “Homeless at sixteen. Heroin addict at seventeen. Guess I was a late bloomer on that one. Living on the streets, getting by however.” He looks at his feet. I can guess what “however” means. “And then Jesus found me, or vice versa maybe. Been blessed ever since.”

  This was not the turn I expected. Nowhere is “Jesus freak” written on Jack Vallano. He crosses his legs and leans back in the squeaky chair again. If he had a cigarette, he would be smoking it.

  “If I may,” Dr. Grant says, smoothing his hand against the dull wooden surface, “what do you do now, for your living?”

  “Postal service in Chicago,” he answers.

  “Okay, great. How did you end up there?”

  “Found a job through my sponsor from NA.”

  “Narcotics Anonymous?” I ask, and Jack nods.

  “My sponsor knew I wouldn’t make it at home with all my same old triggers, so he gave me a bus ticket to Chicago and two hundred bucks. Got to Chicago and spent the toughest hour of my life right outside the bus station, deciding whether to shoot up the two hundred or get an apartment. Jesus won. Got the apartment. Been there ever since. Still go to a meeting every single day.”

  “So you took some time off to come down?” I ask.

  “Ain’t had a sick day in years,” he says. “Plenty of time saved up.”

  There is a pause in the conversation. I tap my foot, hear myself doing it, then stop. In the silence, Jack swings his face to me with a jolt, not taking his eyes off me for a long moment.

  “Is everything okay?” I ask finally, to break the silence.

  Jack swallows and readjusts his eye patch. “Yeah, fine. It’s nothing.” He reaches for his cigarettes again but his hand remembers and stops midway. “This place has got me pretty fucked-up,” he says, shaking his head with a strained smile.

  “Okay,” Dr. Grant says, redirecting the conversation. “So let me ask you…and first let me say, I understand your apprehension at the talk of releasin
g your sister.” “Apprehension” being a mild understatement. “But,” he continues, “if you found a new life through Jesus, what makes you so certain your sister can’t change, too? I mean, as you say, it’s been twenty years.”

  Jack nods and crosses his large arms across his chest. “That’s what I’m going to find out.”

  “How’s that?” Dr. Grant asks.

  “If she’s changed, like you say, I’ll be the first to congratulate her. No, even better. I’ll be the first to give her a hug. Hey, I wasn’t no saint myself. One more year and I would’ve ended up dead or in jail, no doubt. I would’ve stolen the shirt off your back for drugs, killed you as soon as looked at you.” He raps his knuckle lightly on the table. “People change. I know I did. So that’s what I come to find out: Did she change, or is she the devil?”

  Dr. Grant nods then rubs his smooth, pink chin as if he has a goatee. “How will you decide that, do you think?”

  Jack nods, furrowing his eyebrows. “I’ll look her in the eye and talk to her. That’s all I can do. Find out if there’s any room for Jesus in her.” He squints his good eye for a second. “I’m not one to talk about Jesus every other sentence. Not my way. Everyone’s got their own business and don’t nobody care most of the time.” Here he looks straight at me, his blue eye bright, Sofia Vallano blue. “But you all can’t afford to make a mistake on this one. And I don’t take this lightly.”

  “No, of course, not,” says Dr. Grant. “I can assure you none of us take it lightly.”

  There is a pause then, and I move my chair an inch toward him. “What is your biggest concern here, Mr. Vallano,” I ask, “if we were to release her? Do you think she might try to come after you again?”

  “No,” he answers, thinking about it. “She wouldn’t dare touch me now. But it’s more the principle of the thing.”

  “The principle?”

  “Yeah,” he answers. “The principle. If you got the devil locked up, you don’t let him out for nothing.”

  * * *

  Sofia is tapping her nails on the table. Tap…tap tap. Tap…tap tap, like some kind of tinny Morse code. She looks around at the inspirational photos with feigned interest, covering what is likely abject terror at facing her brother again. Jack grabbed a bite to eat while I collected Sofia Vallano, and we are now waiting in the same family therapy room for his return.